Tech University Munich team wins Hyperloop speed competition

With a speed of 324 kmph (201 mph), a group of students from the Technical University Munich sent a test vehicle through the hyperloop tube of US entrepreneur Elon Musk in Los Angeles. The WARR-Hyperloop team thus defended their victory from the first competition at the beginning of the year.
The Hyperloop, introduced in 2015 by SpeceX founder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, is the concept of a high-speed train, which is to move at approximately the speed of sound in a tube under partial vacuum. Student teams from all over the world are called upon to submit their concepts for the so-called pod - the cabine capsule, in which passengers are to be transported through the tube.

With a speed of 324 kmph (201 mph), a group of students from Technical University Munich sent a test vehicle through the hyperloop tube of US entrepreneur Elon Musk in Los Angeles. The WARR-Hyperloop team thus defended their victory from the first competition at the beginning of the year.

The Hyperloop, introduced in 2015 by SpeceX founder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, is the concept of a high-speed train, which is to move at approximately the speed of sound in a tube under partial vacuum. Student teams from all over the world are called upon to submit their concepts for the so-called pod - the cabine capsule, in which passengers are to be transported through the tube.

In Competition I, which took place in January 2017, two main prizes were awarded: a main prize for the fastest pod won by the WARR Hyperloop team from the TU Munich, and a main prize for the best overall concept, which went to Technical University Delft from Holland. In Competition II, only the speed counted.

More than 20 teams came to the second Los Angeles contest to test their capsule in the specially constructed tube at the SpaceX site. Only three teams were able to qualify for the finals following the strict technical tests. In addition to the WARR-Hyperloop team from the TU Munich, these teams were Paradigm Hyperloop, a team at the Northeastern University and Memorial University of Newfoundland & Labrador, and Swissloop at ETH Zurich.

Image: warr-hyperloop.de

The pod of Swissloop reached a speed of 39 kilometers per hour in the near vacuum tube, Paradigm Hyperloop's pod reached 104 kmph. As the last team, WARR launched its Hyperloop vehicle. Their pod was one of the smallest in the competition. It weighs only 80 kg and is powered by a 50 kW electric motor. The concept worked well: in the tube, the pod accelerated to 324 kmph and was by far the fastest in the competition. WARR-Hyperloop’s design is optimized for speed in a 1.2 km tube.